Managed by a state-run defense contractor, the so-called "alert project" matches faces from surveillance camera footage to a watchlist of suspects. The pilot forms part of the company's efforts to thwart terrorist attacks by collecting the biometric data of millions of citizens (aged between 12 to 65), which is then linked to China's household registration ID cards.
Beijing insists the strict security measures are necessary to tackle numerous incidents of violence and unrest, which it links to Islamic extremists. But activists, including Human Rights Watch, have condemned the policies as a "violation of international human rights norms." China has also been called out for restricting the religious freedoms of the region's 10 million ethnic Uyghurs, most of who are muslims, and for imposing travel restrictions on those belonging to the ethnic minority.
China boasts the world's largest monitoring system, with roughly 170 million CCTV cameras across the country, with plans to install 400 million new ones over the next three years. It now plans to add facial recognition to the mix with the help of AI firms in a bid to understand the mound of video evidence, and track suspects and even predict crimes (Minority Report style).
zephyer19 on January 18th, 2018 at 21:37 UTC »
NPR had a reporter go over and test the system. Seeing if the police could find him; of course this was with their cooperation. They did not alert their officers and he did not have a planned travel route, he went where he wanted. They had him within ten minutes of starting the search.
Darkqween on January 18th, 2018 at 18:51 UTC »
170 MILLION CCTV cameras let that number sink in people
spreud on January 18th, 2018 at 18:47 UTC »
Damn, a couple of days ago me and my friends were joking about "racial recognition."